Walter A. Chruby v. Kirk Bearjar

NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
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No. 24-1200
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WALTER A. CHRUBY,
Appellant
v.
KIRK BEARJAR; ANNETTE KOWALEWSKI; JENNIFER SCHROCK; JAMEY
LUTHER; STEPHANIE WOOD; M.D. JOHN STRAMAT; M.D. ROBERT VALLEY;
JOSH SHOLA; M.D. SCOTT MORGAN; KAREN FEATHER; CORRECT CARE
SOLUTIONS LLC; SECRETARY PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF
CORRECTIONS
____________
On Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Pennsylvania
(D.C. No. 3:17-cv-01631)
District Judge: Honorable Malachy E. Mannion
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Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a)
January 13, 2025
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Before: PHIPPS, FREEMAN, and CHUNG, Circuit Judges
(Filed: January 29, 2025)
___________
OPINION*
___________
* This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not
constitute binding precedent.

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PHIPPS, Circuit Judge.
An inmate prone to urinary tract infections sued prison employees in their individual
capacities under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for refusing to place him in a single cell despite his and
his doctors’ assertions that doing so would prevent future infections. He brought claims
for deliberate indifference under the Eighth Amendment, and in response to the employees’
dispositive motions, the District Court rejected those claims. On de novo review of the
inmate’s timely appeal, we will affirm the orders of the District Court.
FACTUAL BACKGROUND
Since age twelve, Walter Chruby, an inmate currently serving a life sentence, has
suffered from a series of renal and urinary conditions. As a result, Chruby has only one
kidney, is susceptible to developing urinary tract infections, commonly referred to as
UTIs,1 and at times has had to self-catheterize – which has further increased his risk of
infection.
As of 2016, Chruby had been incarcerated for nineteen years and had spent over ten
of those years at SCI-Laurel Highlands. Throughout his time there, Chruby repeatedly
requested to be housed in a single cell with a private bathroom. He argued that these
accommodations were medically necessary to reduce his exposure to bacteria that would
cause him to develop UTIs. In support of his position, Chruby obtained three letters from
physicians.
In 2009, Chruby sent the prison a doctor’s letter that opined that a private bathroom
would help reduce Chruby’s infections. But the prison did not commit to housing Chruby
1 A UTI is “an infection of one or more parts of the urinary tract,” which includes the
kidneys (which produce urine), the bladder (which stores urine), the ureters (which carry
urine from the kidneys to the bladder), and the urethra (which drains urine from the bladder
out of the body). RelayClinical, Urinary Tract Infection in Men (App. 546–47). Generally,
UTIs are caused by bacteria. See id. (App. 547). Causes of infection include use of a
catheter, scarring in the urinary tract, and kidney stones. See id. (App. 547).

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in a single cell with a private bathroom. Although from time to time he was housed without
a cellmate, those situations were not intended to be permanent.
In January 2016, Chruby made a written request to the prison superintendent, Jamey
Luther, for a single cell. And for a three-week period in February 2016, he had one.
Afterward, he received a cellmate – a ninety-two-year-old, allegedly infirm man.
On August 1, 2016, while he was housed with that cellmate, Chruby was able to
present the prison with a second doctor’s letter, which provided a more forceful medical
opinion. After explaining that single celling would reduce Chruby’s exposure to bacteria
and would thus “dramatically reduce Mr. Chruby’s rate of UTI and other
complications,” the doctor opined that “providing Mr. Chruby with a single cell is, without
question, medically necessary.” Letter from Matthew Davidson, D.O., to James J. Kutz,
Esq. (Aug. 1, 2016) (App. 984). But despite that doctor’s characterization of single celling
Chruby as “critical in protecting the functionality of his solitary kidney,” id., and despite a
follow-up letter from another doctor asserting that single celling would help “Chruby . . .
avoid more dangerous[] and potential life threatening infections,” Letter from Mang Chen,
M.D., to James J. Kutz, Esq. (Aug. 25, 2016) (App. 985), Chruby was not given his own
cell for the two-and-a-half months he remained at SCI-Laurel Highlands before being
transferred to a different prison on October 13, 2016.
PROCEDURAL HISTORY
On September 12, 2017, Chruby initiated this suit in the District Court, alleging,
among other claims, violations of the Eighth Amendment for deliberate indifference to his
serious medical needs. For those Eighth Amendment claims, he sued three SCI-Laurel
Highlands employees in their individual capacities pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983:
Corrections Health Care Administrator Annette Kowalewski, who oversaw the prison’s

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medical services, staff, and vendors; SCI-Laurel Highlands Superintendent Jamey Luther,
who managed the prison and was responsible for investigating Chruby’s grievances; and
Registered Nurse Supervisor Jennifer Schrock, who helped oversee the prison’s nurses.2
Those defendants filed dispositive motions, and in response, the District Court
adopted two Reports and Recommendations from a Magistrate Judge that relied on the
timing of the doctors’ letters. First, in response to the defendants’ motion to dismiss, the
District Court dismissed Chruby’s claims predating the second doctor’s letter on August 1,
2016. Second, after discovery, the District Court granted summary judgment to the
defendants for claims for the two-and-a-half-month period after the second doctor’s letter
when Chruby had a cellmate at SCI-Laurel Highlands because he did not show anything
more than a difference of medical opinion as to his request for a single cell and because
Kowalewski and Schrock were not involved in Chruby’s housing decisions. See Fed. R.
Civ. P. 56(a).
Through a timely appeal, Chruby invoked this Court’s appellate jurisdiction over
final decisions, see 28 U.S.C. § 1291, to challenge the rejection of his Eighth Amendment
claims.
DISCUSSION
A. The District Court properly dismissed the claims pertaining to the pre-
August 2016 period.
To survive a motion to dismiss on his Eighth Amendment claims, Chruby must have
alleged “enough fact[s] to raise a reasonable expectation that discovery [would] reveal
evidence of” the elements of deliberate indifference. Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S.
544, 556 (2007); see also Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 104 (1976) (holding “that
2 Chruby also sued six other prison employees or contractors, but on April 14, 2023, he
voluntarily dismissed those claims with prejudice.

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deliberate indifference to serious medical needs of prisoners constitutes the ‘unnecessary
and wanton infliction of pain’ proscribed by the Eighth Amendment” (internal citation
omitted) (quoting Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 173 (1976))). But Chruby did not
plausibly plead that Kowalewski, Luther, or Schrock had the requisite intent. In his
complaint, Chruby asserted that he did not start contracting UTIs until he was moved out
of a single cell in 2015, which he argued meant the prison officials should have known that
single celling was medically necessary. He also attached the 2009 letter in which a doctor
asserted that providing Chruby with a private bathroom would help minimize infections.
But nowhere did Chruby indicate that any doctor told the prison officials that placing
Chruby in a single cell would prevent infections. And one cannot reasonably infer that the
prison employees were deliberately indifferent simply because they failed to respond to
evidence that merely suggested a cause of infection – especially since the doctor’s letter
did not request single celling. See Spruill v. Gillis, 372 F.3d 218, 235–36 (3d Cir. 2004);
see also Durham v. Kelley, 82 F.4th 217, 229 (3d Cir. 2023) (explaining that “to allege the
requisite mental state for . . . ‘deliberate indifference,’” a plaintiff must show “that prison
officials knew of and disregarded ‘an excessive risk to inmate health or safety’” (quoting
Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 837 (1994))). Accordingly, the motion to dismiss was
properly granted.
B. The District Court properly granted the defendants’ summary
judgment motion.
As to the remainder of Chruby’s claims, the defendants moved for summary
judgment under a Celotex theory by arguing that Chruby lacked evidence of a necessary
element of his case: deliberate indifference. See Mall Chevrolet, Inc. v. Gen. Motors LLC,
99 F.4th 622, 630 (3d Cir. 2024) (“[U]nder the Celotex approach, a moving party may . . .
demonstrate that the nonmoving party has not made ‘a showing sufficient to establish the

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existence of an element essential to that party’s case . . . on which that party will bear the
burden of proof at trial.’” (alterations in original) (quoting Celotex Corp. v. Catrett,
477 U.S. 317, 322 (1986))); Durmer v. O’Carroll, 991 F.2d 64, 69 n.13 (3d Cir. 1993)
(explaining that to proceed to trial, there must be genuine issues of fact as to both whether
the official provided adequate care and the official’s intent to do so). Because, as explained
below, Chruby did not make a showing sufficient to establish that any of the defendants
was deliberately indifferent to his serious medical needs, the District Court correctly
granted this motion.
1. Corrections Health Care Administrator Annette Kowalewski
A “mere disagreement as to the proper medical treatment” does not constitute
deliberate indifference. Pearson v. Prison Health Serv., 850 F.3d 526, 535 (3d Cir. 2017)
(quoting Monmouth Cnty. Corr. Institutional Inmates v. Lanzaro, 834 F.2d 326, 346
(3d Cir. 1987)); see also Brown v. Borough of Chambersburg, 903 F.2d 274, 278 (3d Cir.
1990) (“[I]t is well established that as long as a physician exercises professional judgment
his behavior will not violate a prisoner’s constitutional rights.” (citing Youngberg v.
Romeo, 457 U.S. 307, 322–23 (1982))). It is undisputed that whenever Chruby or one of
his doctors requested that he be placed in a single cell, the prison’s doctors conducted an
independent assessment to determine whether single celling was medically necessary – and
they always concluded that it was not. In addition, Kowalewski testified during her
deposition that, based on her medical experience, single celling was not necessary. She
explained that UTIs in men are caused more by poor personal hygiene than by the
environment, which is why there was no correlation between when Chruby contracted UTIs

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and when he was single celled.3 Thus, there was a difference in medical opinion about the
proper treatment for Chruby – and a difference in opinion does not constitute deliberate
indifference. See Pearson, 850 F.3d at 535.
Chruby also has not shown that Kowalewski was deliberately indifferent in allowing
the elderly man to be transferred into his cell. The prison’s doctors reviewed every
inmate’s transfer. And when a Department of Corrections attorney later raised questions
about whether the cellmate posed medical concerns, Kowalewski provided one of the
prison’s doctors with the cellmate’s most recent medical information and confirmed that
the doctor still had no concerns. Accordingly, since Kowalewski relied on the prison’s
doctors in allowing the elderly cellmate to remain with Chruby, Chruby has not
demonstrated that she was deliberately indifferent. See Brown, 903 F.2d at 278. Summary
judgment was therefore properly granted in her favor.
2. Superintendent Jamey Luther
There is no genuine dispute that Luther relied on the medical opinions of
Kowalewski and the prison’s doctors that it was not necessary to single cell Chruby.
Specifically, the prison consulted a set of doctors – including doctors located at the prison,
doctors associated with an outside vendor, and a resident nephrologist associated with the
outside vendor – and not one of them expressed concern about Chruby’s double celling.
When a person with no medical training relies on a medical professional’s recommendation
3 At the summary judgment stage, Chruby produced an expert report arguing that single
celling was medically necessary and that the prison’s doctors were not equipped to opine
on what was best for Chruby. But the report was unsworn, and an unsworn report may not
be considered on a summary judgment motion if the opposing party objects, see Fowle v.
C & C Cola, 868 F.2d 59, 67 (3d Cir. 1989) (citing what was then Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(e)
and what is now Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c)(4)), as the defendants did. Even if the expert report
were considered, it would demonstrate only that the prison’s doctors may have been
incorrect in their assessment, not that the defendants were deliberately indifferent by
relying on its doctors’ opinions.

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about an inmate’s care, that person cannot have the requisite intent for deliberate
indifference unless she had “a reason to believe (or actual knowledge) that prison doctors
or their assistants [were] mistreating (or not treating)” the inmate. Spruill, 372 F.3d at 236.
And Chruby has not presented any evidence suggesting that Luther should have doubted
these doctors’ conclusions, let alone that she should have assumed that they were
mistreating Chruby. Thus, Chruby has not made a showing sufficient to conclude that
Luther had the requisite intent for deliberate indifference, and summary judgment was
properly granted in her favor.
3. Registered Nurse Supervisor Jennifer Schrock
There is no dispute that Schrock, unlike Kowalewski and Luther, did not have any
control over Chruby’s housing. And an individual cannot be deliberately indifferent as to
an inmate’s treatment if she is not personally involved with that treatment. See Rode v.
Dellarciprete, 845 F.2d 1195, 1207 (3d Cir. 1988). Accordingly, without a showing that
Schrock was involved in Chruby’s housing, it was proper to enter summary judgment in
her favor.
CONCLUSION
For the above reasons, we will affirm the judgment of the District Court.

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